The Met Gala 2024 red carpet was a spectacle in a city roiled by them

NEW YORK - You know the city is really going through it when fashion’s biggest night of the year is only the third most-tumultuous thing happening on a Monday.

At 6:30 p.m., as five tuxedoed men helped carry Gigi Hadid’s yellow-rose-adorned Thom Browne gown up the green and beige steps of the 2024 Met Gala, hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters in kaffiyehs were met (and, in some cases, arrested) by police at barricades along Madison Avenue and East 80th Street, just out of sight and earshot from the celebs pouring out of their black SUVs. Earlier that day, 30 blocks to the north, Columbia University had canceled its main commencement ceremony amid weeks-long protests calling for a cease-fire in Gaza that have led to clashes with students and police in riot gear.

And all the way downtown, former president Donald Trump had been appearing at his criminal hush money trial, where that very morning he’d been held in contempt of court for his 10th violation of a gag order.

This dress code of this year’s gala is based on a J.G. Ballard short story, “The Garden of Time,” about a rich count and countess who wall themselves off in splendor as a mob descends upon them, which seems eerily apropos.

There was plenty of screaming going on inside the tent for this splashy fundraiser, headed by Vogue editor in chief Anna Wintour, which raises millions each year for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute. But it was mostly for Zendaya, a co-chair of the night, alongside Bad Bunny, wearing a black hat that looked like an old-timey hot-water bottle; Jennifer Lopez in head-to-toe silver crystals; and Chris Hemsworth, who’d joked he might show up in sweatpants but instead wore a simple cream suit. “Tom Ford sweatpants,” he explained.

Hemsworth and Zendaya might as well have been the James Franco and Anne Hathaway of this gala (the one who seems stoned vs. the one who’s carrying the whole thing). Zendaya showed up with not just one, but two elaborate looks, both by John Galliano. When mainstay gala closer Rihanna called in sick with the flu, Zendaya came to the rescue with a second look, which included a flower-laden Philip Treacy for Alexander McQueen hat that was serving Kate-Winslet-in-the-opening-of-“Titanic” drama and probably took out a few people every time the actress turned her head.

Most of those on the carpet seemed unfazed about the tumult happening outside the tent. “There’s always chaos in the city,” said singer-actress Teyana Taylor, who’s been busy with two kids and performing a burlesque show, and seemed more concerned about ripping her archival rose-shaped dress from The Blonds. “I’m a New York girl. There’s chaos in the train car. New York is New Yorkin’.”

A few, though, like Rev. Al Sharpton, who’s been covering Trump’s trial, have been paying close attention. “I think so far he’s got a high hill to climb,” said Sharpton, who was accompanying his girlfriend, designer Aisha McShaw. “I remember many years ago we marched on Trump about the Central Park Five. He’s in the same [courthouse] building now facing his own fate. We call it karma.”

Did Sharpton sense something new in the atmosphere? “I just think it shows you that the city can grow,” he said. “Donald Trump is at the criminal court and Al Sharpton is at this mega event, and it shows you, if you hold on long enough, things will change.”

Change, decay and the march of time were all woven into the way that celebrities interpreted this year’s inscrutable theme: “Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion.” What? Yeah, you’ve got us, too. The Costume Institute exhibition that opened to the press the morning before the gala features beautiful clothes so old and fragile that they have to be displayed lying flat, as well as a kind of Odorama twist wherein you can smell the molecules of very musty old clothes. It is not entirely pleasant.

Nicole Kidman, who said she’d read the Ballard story (“It’s required by Anna!”), was dressed in ‘50s black-and-white Balenciaga as “a sleeping beauty that’s brought back to life” - although the bodice was so tight one presumes the beauty is back at death’s door in short order.

Her bestie Naomi Watts, also in Balenciaga, had gone more funereal than literal, in all black with a widow’s veil. Her dress, she explained, had been made from an old tablecloth that the atelier had bought on eBay and covered in embroidery and beading. But true to the themes of the story - preservation of art and whatnot - the designers had not cut the fabric and “only added to it in its original form,” said Watts.

“Who knows whose table it sat on, what meals were eaten, who came to the dinner party?” she pondered. And here she was, bringing that tablecloth to another fabulous party, where Nicki Minaj had brightly colored metal flowers sticking out of her back. Watts also pointed out that she, too, would be a sleeping beauty, when she collapsed somewhere from exhaustion and used the puffy stole she was wearing as a pillow.

Past years at the Met Gala have featured pigeons flying inside the tent, and, last year, a hero roach who almost crashed the party, but this year was sadly devoid of animals, unless you count Doja Cat who showed up in what looked like a giant wet T-shirt, or Colman Domingo, who’d changed his eye color to a feline bright green just for kicks.

Lana Del Rey probably came closest to channeling a creature of the forest, with a crown of thorns that looked like elk antlers wrapped in tan gauze from designer Seán McGirr at Alexander McQueen, who paid tribute to an archival McQueen from 2006. The crown looked like it was either going to poke a hole in the singer’s head - or a bystander’s eye out.

“They’re real, but they don’t hurt,” said Del Rey. And was she worried about running into people? “That’s the only thing I’m not worried about.”

Some celebs seemed to interpret the theme to just mean “big.” Cardi B showed up in the statement gown of the evening: a black turban and a sea of black tulle from Windowsen that took eight men to carry up the stairs. It was so big that Shakira, in red Carolina Herrera with a huge train, couldn’t get close enough to hug her, no matter how hard the two of them tried - and they tried for a couple minutes!

“I wanted to hug her so bad, but I can’t move in this and she can’t really reach me,” said Shakira, laughing. “Separated by fashion!”

Flowers, of course, were everywhere, on Sydney Sweeney and Greta Lee and Ayo Edebiri. But none did it better than theater director Jordan Roth, whose hooded Valentino Couture was meant to evoke an entire life cycle of a garden, from bugs to bloom to decay and back to the earth.

“Aren’t we all just decaying in the garden of time?” he asked. “It’s a blessing to be here and to be decaying all together.”

After all, if there was anything that connected everyone on the carpet, it’s that we’re all facing down the passage of time. “I was more freaked out in my 30s and then I got to my 40s and you stop caring,” said Gabrielle Union, looking like a mermaid in a sea-themed sequined Michael Kors dress.

“Now, at 51, I’m busier than I have ever been. So if it isn’t happening for you yet, don’t believe them when they’re like, ‘If you’re past 35, wrap it up.’”

That might be easier to say for someone like Union, who, we pointed out, seems to be aging backward.

“Not in my lower back,” she said.